PAOGA - Privacy & Trust in the Digital Age

September 29, 2010

Publicly available cell-phone applications from application markets are releasing consumers' private information to online advertisers, according to a joint study by Intel Labs, Penn State and Duke University.

In a study of 30 popular applications, TaintDroid, a realtime monitoring service, revealed that 15 send users' geographic location to remote advertisement servers. The study also found that seven of the 30 applications send a unique phone (hardware) identifier and, in some cases, the phone number and SIM card serial number to developers. In all, the researchers identified 68 instances of potentially misused private information by 20 applications.

August 27, 2010

A report last year from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) appeared at BBC News

Almost a third of internet users are not shopping online because they do not trust the system. Personal security was high on the list of concerns."Online retailing is the future for many businesses and increasingly important to the economy," said OFT chief executive John Fingleton. "If consumers are not confident online, demand will grow at a slower rate. So we must tackle these concerns right now if the online market is to grow at its full potential."

As we are using the internet today to communicate and transact with more than retailers, including government, resolving these valid concerns are increasingly important in the current economic climate.Establishing Trust and Confidence using TRM would significantly contribute to addressing a number of the serious issues facing us today:

We believe that privacy is important and propose an alternative scenario for the future in which YOU hold, maintain and share your data under your terms and conditions - Trusted Relationship Management.

Consumer tracking is the foundation of an online advertising economy that racked up $23 billion in ad spending last year. Tracking activity is exploding. Researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute last fall found tracking technology on 80% of 1,000 popular sites, up from 40% of those sites in 2005.

These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.

This is without your knowledge or permission and you are getting no benefit from this $23 billion business even though YOU ARE THE PRODUCT!

Targeted ads command a premium. Last year, the average cost of a targeted ad was $4.12 per thousand viewers, compared with $1.98 per thousand viewers for an untargeted ad, according to an ad-industry-sponsored study in March.

At the moment this data is used to place ads on web sites which reflect your interests and concerns as assumed from the websites and pages you visit. This could be your favorite books and films to your health concerns and financial information. They claim that they do not collect any personal identifying information (name, address etc.) but, for how long?

August 03, 2010

I have extracted some points raised in Shaun Smiths’ article at mycustomer.com which will be addressed by organisations that adopt a TRM (Trusted Relationship Management) approach to their customers.

Research from IBM found that companies that are successful in creating both an emotional and functional bond have much higher levels of retention and also cross sells. It found that retention rates were 84% compared to only 30% for those organisations that didn’t create a functional and emotional bond, and it found that cross-sell success was 82% compared to 16%.

1. Customer
insight

What do they value? – to make them fans you need to have level of insight around what your most profitable customers value so that you can make a proposition to meet their needs.

How are their needs changing? – make sure you are ahead of the curve by knowing how their needs are changing.

TRM: Don’t guess – ask your
customers.

Provide them with access to your
knowledge about them so that they can correct and update your information for
mutual benefit.

2. Brand
promise

Once
you are clear about who your profitable customers are and what they value and
what you can do differently, then you need to be really clear about what your
stand for, what your propositions are and what your promise is. What does your
brand stand for, what can you promise and how will this differentiate you?

TRM: Don’t guess – ask your
customers.

Provide them with a communication
channel so they can tell you what they like and don’t like about you for mutual
benefit.

3. Design the
customer experience

Virgin
Airways, for instance, looked at its profitable customers, considered what they
value, and decided what they can do to create an experience which
differentiates it. They looked at the customer journey and designed it to take
out the pain points at the critical points in the journey. And it has very
successfully taken huge market share from its competitors by doing that.

TRM: Don’t guess – ask your
customers.

Virgin do a lot of that but,
using TRM, even their communication can be improved.

4. Drive
organisational behaviour

"Over
the last few years we have also seen a shift towards more outbound
communications, using contact centres to provide outbound marketing and
cross-sell and so on," adds Smith. "For most customers, ‘CRM’ is
about that phone call that you get from the call centre from Bangalore at five o’clock on a Saturday
evening. It is about that junk mail that comes through your door. It is the
spam email in your inbox. For many customers, CRM is a dirty word. It means
people trying to sell me stuff I don’t want because they don’t know much about
me. And actually one of the things that technology can do is give us real
insight around customers and what they value and enables us to provide that
value by doing that.

TRM: Don’t guess – ask your
customers.

CRM is no longer trusted as the accurate customer knowledge base to
provide relevant information for customers. The data has been corrupted,
stolen, shared and sold to the detriment of customers as described by Smith above.

The
solution is to involve your customers by extending CRM to TRM allowing 2-way communication and justifying the word 'Relationship'.

5. External
communications

Being
a big company or being around a long time is no longer so important to
customers. Yet much of traditional marketing still focuses on telling customers
that the company is big, has been around a long time and is everywhere. But
what the customers really want to know is why they should trust you. According
to research by Grey Worldwide, millennials are 31% more likely than baby
boomers to rank “is a company or brand I can trust” as a top five customer
service attribute. Trust is becoming an increasingly big deal.

The benefits of TRM (Trusted Relationship Management) enabling individuals, in their multiple personae, to manage and share their information held in Personal Data Stores with suppliers with whom they have/want a relationship have been clear to us for some years. The recent changes to the financial and political climate has prompted the market, public and private, to now recognise the significance and value of trust in their relationships.

We believe that now is the time for the various 'like minded' individuals and organisations who share this vision to collaborate to provide the tools and services to the market.

July 01, 2010

'Your Personal Data is Yours' would be my strapline but, at the IoS Forum at Savoy Place,the objective is the same.

I will be presenting how PAOGA PIMS (Personal Information Management Services)can extend and enhance current CRM systems to deliver TRM (Trusted Relationship Management) providing 2-way conversations between subjects, that's you and me as individuals, and suppliers with whom we want a relationship.

Trust is the key.

Trust provides Confidence which leads to a Relationship which delivers Value

Interesting and informative dinner last night hosted by Frank Kelcz at Le Boudin Blanc, Shepherds Market, with a dozen influential business leaders covering a wide range of topics. All share my confidence and enthusiasm for the future in this climate of 'change'.